Elektrobit (EB), a visionary global supplier of embedded and connected software products for the automotive industry, has announced a cloud-based tool for end-to-end validation of advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving (AD) systems. Available on Microsoft’s cloud platform Azure, the new EB Assist Test Lab provides distributed teams with a single solution to more easily manage petabytes of driving-scene data generated in real and simulated test drives during the validation and verification process, collaborate and ultimately bring latest features into production more quickly.
Today, automotive engineering teams are forced to use multiple, often unaligned, tools to handle the complete validation and verification process. As automotive systems become increasingly more complex and data intensive, the process has become correspondingly more challenging and convoluted. Scaling these complex systems is especially problematic. Those involved with the process – which can range from test drivers and engineers to data scientists, IT pros and project managers, among others – are typically located in different parts of the world, which makes data orchestration even more difficult.
EB Assist Test Lab offers a unique, end-to-end approach to validation and verification, providing a “one-stop-shop” solution integrating tools that are already on the market and in use with additional functionality to cover critical gaps. It covers the entire testing cycle, from data collection to data analysis, including optimized processes for collaboration, integration with third-party tools and services, data processing and management, and more. The combined goals of improved workflow, increased efficiencies and ultimately accelerated schedules are all realized in the new EB product.
“We worked closely with our customers to identify the pain points in the current test process, and build – from the ground up – a new type of product that addresses every need in the validation and verification workflow,” said Martin Schleicher, executive vice president, business management, Elektrobit. “In addition, we’ve identified a network of best-in-breed providers in cloud services, simulation technologies, and AI, with a goal of providing our customers with the ultimate automotive test solution. We are pleased to announce EB Assist Test Lab that we built on Azure supported by our partner Microsoft. Azure will bring significant benefit to our customers, including global scalability, flexibility and enterprise-grade security to enable mobility companies to quickly test and analyze data, and thus go to market faster, eliminating the burden of infrastructure implementation and maintenance.”
In collaboration with cloud partners such as Microsoft and data center providers like Equinix, EB Assist Test Lab is infinitely scalable, able to handle the vast and growing amounts of data generated by today’s increasingly complex systems equipped with radar, Lidar and high-resolution cameras. According to EB, data collections per vehicle per day currently average hundreds of megabytes per second, and are expected to increase to multiple gigabytes per second in the next generation.
“Collecting and storing data securely at scale, and making it available wherever and whenever needed, is essential to the delivery of autonomous driving solutions,” said Sanjay Ravi, general manager Automotive Industry at Microsoft Corp. “Microsoft is working with Elektrobit to help them tackle the increasingly challenging and time-consuming process of testing and validation to accelerate the development of advanced driving applications.”
Along with automotive software development and integration, the validation and verification category is experiencing tremendous growth, expected to increase by 10 percent per year between 2020 and 2030, according to a recent study conducted by McKinsey & Company. Because of the demands of increasingly sophisticated ADAS and AD systems, validation and verification are expected to represent approximately 29 percent ($24 billion USD) of the total automotive software market in 2030.
